We will do much better if we trust someone who was actually dead, not someone who was just near death. Christ, as we shall see, is the only One who is qualified to tell us what we can expect on the other side. He was dead – so dead that His body became cold and was put in a tomb. Three days later He was raised from the dead with a glorified body. Here is someone whose opinion can be trusted. To John this risen Christ said, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades “ (Revelation 1:17-18). Reliable information does not come to us by trying to peer behind the partially open curtain. God alone knows what really lies on the other side of the veil. And that is why we can do no better than study what the Bible has to say about the Great Beyond.
— Erwin Lutzer (b. 1941), Pastor, Radioprediger und Buchautor
Related Bible passage: REV.1.18
Topics: Eternity & Hope Beyond Death, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit
Erwin Lutzer
Erwin W. Lutzer (* 1941) ist ein US-amerikanischer evangelikaler Theologe, Buchautor und Radioprediger, der von 1980 bis 2016 als Hauptpastor der Moody Church in Chicago wirkte. Bekannt wurde er durch weltweite Radiosendungen und Publikationen zur Glaubenslehre, wobei seine scharfe Kulturkritik sowie ein zivilrechtliches Urteil wegen Verletzung der Privatsphäre eines früheren Mitarbeiters umstritten sind. Bibellesern vermitteln seine Texte zugängliche Schriftauslegungen und theologische Orientierung im Rahmen eines konservativ-evangelikalen Bibelverständnisses.
All quotes by Erwin Lutzer (50)
I ask myself: what does hell mean? I maintain: it is the inability to love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
God has put eternity into our hearts and filled it with longing.
John Piper
C.S. Lewis
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
Jim Elliot
Martin Luther King Jr.
Whoever knows Easter cannot despair.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Helmut Thielicke
Charles Haddon Spurgeon